It's for messaging with old people. It's like having a telephone doesn't mean you're talking all day. It's for people to be able to contact you and vice versa.
I'm just here to enjoy the endlessly fractal spiraling double-think of tariffs being the devil when the US implements them, and being double-plus-good when the European Union implements them (or China or South America).
As hackers here are very intelligent but also very unwise, they find great enjoyment in double-think exercises and the resentment it gives them.
The EU has a weighted mean tariff of about 1.3%. Prior to ol' mini-hands, the US had a weighted mean of 2.4%; it now has a weighted mean of about 8% (or, well, did until this ruling, who knows now). China is 2.1%. A couple of countries in South America have very high tariffs, but you'd expect that; high tariffs are normally a marker of a developing economy.
The idea that the EU is high-tariff, while popular on the internet, is simply not supported by the facts.
Tariffs are great for developing countries. It protects their nascent industries/businesses that are not even ready to compete with those from developed countries and specifically to prevent developed countries from dumping goods (look up anti-dumping laws). Tariffs suck for developed countries as it just raises tax on its own citizens without any benefits that are enjoyed by developing countries.
> being the devil when the US implements them, and being double-plus-good when the European Union implements them (or China or South America).
You can also flip the argument and say that it is "double-plus-good" when USD is reserve currency but is the devil when Euro, Yen, Yuan, Rubles, Rupee et all want to be reserve currency too. Why does US admin go bananas when the topic of a BRICS currency is brought up?
Developed countries have levers. Developing countries have levers too. That's how balance has been maintained all these years since the World order was established post-WW2. Now if US wants to undo this World order (which it itself help setup) and wants to behave like a developing country, then developing countries will encroach on areas US holds dear to it: USD as reserve currency, cross-border transactions through SWIFT, imposing sanctions etc. Remember that it is not US alone that holds all the cards. Everyone else has their own cards as well.
Please study why tariffs exist in the first place. It is not to punish a country. It is used as protection from a stronger adversary, especially by developing countries, for balancing trade disparities. Not everything can be lop-sided in favor of US.
Because US is a developed country. US should not be imposing tariffs and taxing its own citizens for zero gains.
> about punishment and such
Tariffs is like taking a battle-axe and hacking your own foot. So it is definitely a punishment for US Citizens. Who do you think was paying the exorbitant 40-50% import duties? It is not the exporting country. It is the US Citizen/Company, that was importing the product/raw material, which had to pay those duties. It is a massive tax on US Citizens apart from the tax they are already paying.
None of them have country wide tariffs (not counting reciprocal tariffs imposed after Trump imposed tariffs).
US has nearly double the GDP of second in line: China. It can easily dump goods at lower cost compared to China or any other country on the planet and destroy domestic competition. Which is why tariffs are imposed on select industries/products. It is an anti-dumping measure.
Like I said, US is behaving like a developing country by imposing tariffs. Which is only going to hurt its own citizens.
And this is the fractal spiraling hacker double-think I was looking forward to enjoy. Now China is a poor little developing country which is vulnerable to the USA dumping their low-cost goods onto them.
Edit: I appreciate that you are arguing your points like a gentleman, while I'm maybe not.
> Now China is a poor little developing country which is vulnerable to the USA dumping their low-cost goods onto them.
It is not about being poor or little per se, but more about being developing. Just because China is second in GDP and is a behemoth in various sectors (and clearly way ahead, in comparison to US in some of the sectors), it is still clearly not on the same level as USA both economically or militarily. Despite that, China does not apply a blanket tariff on all nations of the World. It is more targeted and specific to sectors where it feels the other nation can endanger it. Heck, it can even remove tariffs if it feels domestic production is more expensive. For example, China removed 30% import duty on Indian pharma sector because domestic production of the same generic as well as branded drugs was more expensive.
The higher you are in the economic ladder, it is only beneficial for you to reduce your tariffs. Because of two simple points:
1. You being higher in the economic ladder implies you have higher disposable income. That means your citizens can buy produce/services at cheaper rates from those below the ladder.
2. Lower/zero tariffs ensures no brakes on spending.
If you increase tariffs, you are going to reduce the disposable income of your own citizens. Because those tariffs are borne by the citizens. The tariff that is collected does not reduce any deficit that exists between your country and the countries below you in the economic ladder as deficits are reduced through increasing exports and not by taxing imports.
The problem with Trump's tariffs is that it is not targeted. It is across the board. This reduces disposable income of US citizens drastically, thereby forcing them to NOT spend on anything except for what is needed for survival. Wages are not increasing to offset the loss in disposable income (it is hardly keeping up with rising inflation). So what is the net result if citizens do not have sufficient disposable income to buy products/services beyond what is bare necessities? You end up in recession or worse a depression.
It is not the first time this has been tried. It has been tried before with devastating consequences for US and indirectly rest of the World. Read up on 1930's Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which directly contributed to accelerating the depression: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Ac...
Famously tariffs on steel. The European Union was originally created as a tariffs union, and the official name was "European Coal and Steel Community", which then slowly grew into the EU we have now.
Steel tariffs are still a core part of the EU, and are aggressively used today.
The European Commission has all the information on tariffs you might be interested in at this page:
HP makes them, so does Dell. They cost a bit extra, but essentially the whole Federal government runs on nothing else.
The difference between EU and US is that it's possible to make all components in the US, using US equipment, and so some companies do because it commands a pretty decent premium. It's not even that hard since most components (e.g. reference motherboard designs) are still designed and actually built in the US. China still really mostly does what you might politely call "commercializes US tech". And let's not discuss too deeply if they correctly pay licensing for all the components they make, because nobody enjoys that discussion.
And yep, as you might expect, only Intel chips, no Nvidia cards ... and that's not the end of the limitations. The previous version had no USB-C monitor support, never mind one USB-C cable to multiple monitors, but last year intel really pushed a bit harder. But even this year, I'd hope you're not going to be trying to use these machines for gaming.
The EU can't even make a modern motherboard's USB port chip.
Oh and yes, there are cracks in the US version too. The phones used, for example, are iPhones. Radio designed in South Korea ...
I'm rather curious where in the US HP and Dell source, let's say, their displays?
And while many (but certainly not all) of the other components could be made in the US, it's expensive and capacity is limited. So even the likes of HP and Dell have most of it done in Asia. Even Intel chips generally pass through Asia for assembly and testing, and their modern CPU tiles are likely to include TSMC-fabricated components.
All this is to say: the US is not tech independent (unless ancient tech counts). No single country is.
Though if you're just trying to say that the EU is significantly more tech-dependent than the US then I agree of course.
The most technologically critical component of ASML's EUV lithography machines (the EUV light source) is designed, developed, and manufactured in California by Cymer.
> forces the Dutch government to put export controls on some of their machines
That's because the critical EUV light source technology is developed in California by a US-based subsidiary of ASML. The US and EU have mutual interest in protecting the technology and machines. If export control agreements were not in place then ASML would have never been permitted to acquire Cymer. And if they are not enforced then the US would almost certainly require ASML to sell Cymer back to US ownership, TikTok-style.
The first one I'm ok with, the second one I'm not sure what you're saying? Google suggests the largest library in the world is the US Congress library, but I couldn't find any sources saying it's banned in Germany? (Also, it's a physical place in the US... What?)
Closest thing I could find to library banned in Germany was a collection of pirated material, which was blocked at a DNS level, meaning many users bypass the ban accidentally, and anyone who wants to can trivially use a different DNS.
I mean I'm probably more in favour of digital piracy than the next guy, but I had completely missed that were calling copyright protection censorship now?
Yes, I'm referring to the pirate site, which is the largest collection of books in the history of mankind. Of course it is a bit fringe to talk about censorship when it comes to piracy, but I would say that it is. While noting that the US also censors pirate websites.
Maybe that's the purpose? Pushing European and global "allies" to show their cards. Some citizens will support more censorship, while some will start questioning. It's good to know where your rivals stand.
Also it is cheap, easy, non-controversial domestically in the US, and ethically coherent with American values.
> Pushing European and global "allies" to show their cards. Some citizens will support more censorship, while some will start questioning. It's good to know where your rivals stand.
I don't think European countries have been shy or sneaky about their restrictions on online content.
I'm a lifelong US citizen and burst out laughing at this. What values? What coherence?
Do you mean the NSA man-in-the-middleing all that traffic and leaving a backdoor for Mossad? Imagine the most despicable possible invasion of privacy and the most reprehensible shadow oppression and manipulation of an uneducated populace you can conjure up.
Now imagine something way worse than that. This is America.
Note that in 36 odd states in the USA companies and their officers (i.e real people) cannot boycott Israel (or even say nasty things) and then do business with the state.
But if you say the American government is occupied by zionists loyal to a foreign government, that's "hate speech" and would land you in prison if not for the enduring strength of the first ammendment (which several Europeans ITT think is bad, because they think "hate speech" is bad and they lack the mental fortitude to admit that sometimes right wing meanies might actually have a valid point.)
Yet another illusion. A lot of Americans are very good at finding ways to persecute people for having an opinion, often using economic consequences as a cudgel to enforce groupthink. And, at this very moment, the government is compiling lists of people it regards as enemies, purely on the basis of their "free" speech.
Money is just an abstract, and the less it circulates, the less stuff gets done. For no purpose but insecurity.
The ideal would be that everybody operates without savings and without debt. Either of those tools only being used exceptionally, when the benefits are enormous.
Yes, and one of the strongest of those nets is limited liability for companies, which I think almost all industrialized countries have, no matter their degree of socialism/capitalism.
The other strong safety net needed is a fluid labour market with high wages for workers, meaning people can take risks and if it doesn't work out, they find a well paying job easily.
And of course health care has to be cheap in this "ideal society".
> I can't take it with me, sure, but I'm happy anyway if I leave it behind to my kids.
You would be happiest if you could take it with you. Since you can't, you'll leave it to your kids, because it would even worse leaving it to somebody else.
Okay, but why would newspapers looking for revenue sources concern themselves with the opinions of somebody who would never pay them no matter what circumstances? You're not a potential customer, so a non-entity in their concerns.
> You're not a potential customer, so a non-entity in their concerns.
A small correction: I am a potential customer, at least in the general sense. I am someone that subscribes to news publications as I already pointed out. Who I pay in any given month is not set in stone, and the news market is still somehow strangely dynamic with new options replacing old ones all the time.
But if I’m paying, then it’s a subscriber-provider relationship; not a virtual bazaar transaction made by clicking a link.
I wouldn't pay .000001 cents either. If they did charge this way the amount of generated clickbait titles would surpass anything we've seen before. At least now they have to backup the clickbait title with content that causes you to stay longer for more ads with micropayments they already took your money.
New micro payment scheme that charges .000001 cents every time you page down. Like the old listicles that make you click into a new page for every number, but instead you have your credit card tied to your scroll wheel.
I'd encourage you to ask a recording artist how they like the arrangement they have with Spotify.
But also, yeah, I do think the streaming financial incentives affect what music gets written and produced. Just not necessarily anything to do with cuss words.
The artists are there because of their own free will. They voluntarily signed their contracts with the record labels. How are journalists and independent journalism doing in comparison?
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